LLEK10249U Evidence, Diet and Health

Volume 2013/2014
Education
MSc Programme in Human Nutrition and MSc Programme in Clinical Nutrition.
Content
The focus of the course is how to assess available evidence for a causal relationship between diet and diseases with a main focus on diet, macronutrients and life-style diseases such as cancer, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The course will provide the students with theoretical teaching in the methodology, several examples and exercises and assignments that gives them opportunity to practise.
Learning Outcome

The main objective of the course is to provide the students with an understanding of basic methods and concepts in nutritional epidemiology, to enable them to assess available evidence for a causal relationship between diet and diseases.

After completion of the course the students should be able to:

Knowledge:
- Define epidemiology and causality
- Describe the epidemiological measures of frequency and association
- Explain the concepts bias, confounding, effect modification, chance, power, validity and generalisability
- List the study designs, and describe their advantages and limitations in relation to nutritional epidemiology
- Describe the structure of a data set, and types of variables

Skills:
- Demonstrate ability to critically assess the validity of studies on the relation between diet and disease
- Demonstrate ability to handle a data set with nutritional variables, and to assess for confounding and effect modification
- Discuss the evidence for causal relationship between diet and disease

Competences:
- Independently perform evidence evaluations of relationships between dietary components and health
- Identify gabs in our current knowledge and to contribute to the planning of studies that will make progress
- Make dietary recommendations based on an evaluation of the evidence

Literature
A compendium will be for sale (at Academic Books) at the start of the course.
Lectures with exemplification and exercise practice. The objective of course assignments is to use of the principles in evaluation of scientific evidence.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Exam
  • 48
  • Lectures
  • 18
  • Practical exercises
  • 16
  • Preparation
  • 34
  • Project work
  • 70
  • Theory exercises
  • 20
  • Total
  • 206
Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written assignment, 48 hours
Description of examination: The student will be given two papers and a number of questions that they have to consider in their answer. They will have 48 hours to do the task in which they are allowed to use all papers from the course, their notes, the internet and also to meet an discuss, but each student have to make an individual answer and they are not allowed to copy writing from other students. The evaluation will consider skills mainly from the strength of the arguments and an overall evaluation of the answer. The final answer of max. 7 A4-pages must be uploaded at Absalon within 48h.
Exam registration requirements
Approval of three written assignments (one individual assignment, two group assignments) during the course.
Aid
All aids allowed
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
No external censorship
Internal grading. More assessors.
Re-exam
If 10 or fewer register for the reexamination the examination form will be oral.
Criteria for exam assesment
Please see "Learning Outcome"